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Well, I have never given that lecture in my classes. I keep covering things like algebra, why lightning behaves the way it does and the forces of impact between a car and a wall. Okay, that last one comes close. Mind you, I don’t think my students are anywhere as strong and tough as some of her students, if the myriad of athletics and other injuries are anything to go by.

However, if you should give such a lecture in class (and with such lecture keeping within the algebra/physics that you teach) then you would pretty much be in the top ten of the coolest teachers in your school!

The lecture Miss Kyle is giving right now is one of the most important lessons an aspiring superhero needs to learn: how to minimize property damage during a fight. Besides concern for property rights, falling debris is a major hazard when powerful superheroes are fighting equally powerful (or more powerful) enemies, whether supervillains, robots, aliens or giant monsters. In the Marvel Universe, there is an entire corporation, called Damage Control, Inc., which cleans up property damage after super-powered throwdowns, and insurance against property damage keeps all but the wealthiest mutants from living in expensive neighborhoods. (That’s another reason why maintaining a secret identity is a double-edged sword: on the one hand you pay lower insurance premiums, but on the other you open yourself up to criminal charges and civil claims of insurance fraud.)

In my experience, the heroes of the Marvel Universe used to be a lot more negligent than the heroes of the DCU when it came to massive property damage. (The X-Men were major offenders in this regard.) Now I’m seeing the opposite happen: even before “Civil War”, the Avengers, FF and X-Men were much more conscientious about where they fought criminals. Spidey was always ahead of the pack in this regard, as he tried his hardest to protect civilians while fighting Doc Ock or the Sandman. The “Stanford Tragedy”, in “Civil War #1” was actually more of an aberration; the New Warriors were negligent in confronting several supervillains who were holed up near a school playground, in the middle of the day. (The fact that Night-thrasher’s team was part of a reality TV show, and that they needed the ratings, makes them even more negligent.)

By contrast, around the same time the DC heroes were becoming much more bloodthirsty. “Identity Crisis” is where the DCU began to go all wrong for me, though in hindsight there were hints beforehand. The destruction of Bluddhaven, the cheap deaths in “Countdown”, Darkseid ravaging Earth, unopposed; things were pretty grim. But that is nothing next to the “Nu52”, where the Justice League are heroes-in-name-only. When Batman is the only member of the Justice League concerned about property damage or hurting civilians, something has gone wrong.

This extends to the respective movie franchises. In the Sam Raimi “Spider-Man” films, Spidey does his best to minimize property damage and civilian casualties, while fighting the Green Goblin/Doc Ock/multiple badguys in the convoluted “Spider-Man 3”. In “The Avengers” most of the team spends the climactic fight with the Ch’tauri saving civilians, helping rescue workers and police, or otherwise keeping the fight contained to a six block radius in midtown Manhattan. (One of the reasons why the estimated cost of cleaning up from the Ch’tauri invasion is in the billions may be due just as much to lost productivity, as office workers fled the invasion site, as it is to property damage. Loki chose to bring his army into a very busy location.)

On the other hand, on “Arrow”, Ollie takes lives, blows up stuff, and pretty much fails to keep Merlyn from blowing up half the city. On the rejected “Wonder Woman” pilot, Wonder Woman is a ruthless vigilante, with law enforcement and the press probably cowed into ignoring her blatant disregard for life, out of fear that they might be next. And of course in “Man of Steel”, Metropolis is accidentally destroyed by Kal-El due to gross incompetence. While Batman caused his fair share of property damage in “The Dark Knight” trilogy, most of the time he did try to find alternatives. If Kevin Kostner had sent Kal-El to Miss Kyle’s class, Kal-El might have learned how to fight a rival without destroying a city.

For example: when fighting an opponent who can hold his breath a long time and survive the vacuum of space, if you can fly and do also hold your breath and survive in space, take the fight to the stratosphere. Or better yet, the moon!

I remember this point from “Superman II.” Supes realizes how much damage is being done to Metropolis and flies away drawing Zod and his two cronies to his Fortress where there will be less colatteral damage.

I must disagree ref: Man of Steel. Kal had just found out the range of his powers when Zod struck. It is all well and good to minimize property damage and loss of life, however, that is hard to do when the other side Wants to cause property damage and loss of life.

Then the Henry Cavill version of Clark doesn’t have the right to wear the suit, end of story. Superman takes risks to save people, it’s as simple as that. (And I do know that he’s never actually called Superman in “Man of Steel”. Maybe he’s really Superman’s evil doppleganger from Earth-3, Ultraman?)

Spidey was learning the ropes in “Spider-Man” and still worked as hard as he could to keep Osborn from throwing a school bus off the Manhattan Bridge. Tony Stark was learning the ropes in “Iron Man”, but he knew enough to lead Obadiah Stane away from traffic, into the upper atmosphere (which was also a good tactic, since Stane’s “Ironmonger” suit wasn’t adapted to solve the “icing problem”). Why couldn’t Clark grab Zod, take a deep breath, and fly to the moon? Or into the Marianas Trench? Or into the desert? The fact is that the Avengers saved Earth, saved New York from being nuked, and keept midtown Manhattan relatively intact while doing so. Clark Kent helped level Metropolis in “Man of Steel”. Some hero. 🙁

Actually, Man of Steel Clark was shown taking all kinds of risks to protect Metropolis. It’s just that, y’know, he was in the South Pacific trying to save the entire planet, so he couldn’t also be in North America preventing property damage. Most of the damage was done by the gravity beam emitted by Zod’s ship, and Superman shut that down as fast as he could. It’s only once he got back to Metropolis and was attacked by Zod that he was unable to steer the fight away from civilians – and even then, he did the best he could. Although more used to his powers than Zod, he didn’t have the fighting skill to hold on to a fighter who’d been training all his life for combat (and who had the same strength level as he) for more than a second, nor could he throw him much further than a few meters before Zod could right himself using his own powers. (And he did try a number of throws in the climactic battle, and fail to get Zod any more than three meters away from him.) On top of that, this version of Clark had been engaging in any kind of combat, let alone with beings on his strength level, for all of a day. When faced with such a powerful, skilled opponent with strength equaling his, it’s very likely that he didn’t have time to consider the ramifications and how to avoid them beyond “get him up and away from the street so people can get out.” This is a less experienced Superman, and though he still protects lives, he has less experience in, say, holding on to other Kryptonians and flying them all the way up to the moon. 😛

And yes, Clark is called Superman several times toward the movie’s climax.

So yeah, the fact is that Clark saved Earth, stopped Metropolis from being completely annihalated by Zod’s gravity beam, and kept the city relatively intact under assault from multiple beings with a dimensional-rift-powered spacecraft and powers equal to his own. I’d say he did a decent job, given the circumstances.

Now, in the DCnU at large, it does indeed seem that DC is gravitating towards a more anti-heroic take on even their most straight-laced heroes. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, and it’s certainly possible that some of those characters will gravitate back toward their older portrayals as their stories progress further.

I think it’s against the law in the Nu52 for any hero to be straight-laced. And that’s not a good thing either; one of the best Superman stories DC published in the last ten years, was Joe Kelly’s “What’s So Funny About Truth and Justice?”, in which the Elite, a group of Authority expies, announce that Superman is obsolete, because he believes in obeying the law, not killing his enemies and acting like a mensch, instead of a total wanker. Kelly shows how the Elite underestimate how intelligent Superman is, how determined he is to stop them, and Superman shows Manchester Black why you shouldn’t push around a polite person, if he’s one of the most powerful people on the planet. Basically the story reconstructs superheroes, much the same way “All-Star Superman” did.

I’m not sure what their exact ages are, but I believe that Suzie is one of the youngest kids in Miss Kyle’s class. Chronologicall, Murphy is the oldest (he predates most of creation, after all), and Toby is the youngest (clone). Zodon’s age is tricky to pinpoint, since he’s super-intelligent. Malphast is also tricky to pinpoint, since he’s a “new thing” but that is by the reckoning of beings of Order and Chaos. Prospero’s age is impossible to tell, but according to the “PS238 RPG” he is in fact a child. I think Tyler’s age has been mentioned before as being nine, and I think Ambriel, Julie, Ron, Kevin, Victor, Polly, Alejandro, Jenny and Dillon are probably in the eight to ten range.

Ah! Well then, that certainly narrows down the significance/meaning of the beeping device from yesterpage. And also how Victor built the machine from earlier this issue, even. But what issue does Zodon see that we don’t?

Not sure if your comment is in jest or not, so I’ll just go ahead and treat it as a serious suggestion.

“Shut it down, or I’ll shut it down for you!” doesn’t strike me as a threat to eliminate the competition (I mean, why bother, when one can simply steal a working machine?), but more of a “You fool, what have you done!?” kind of outrage. Zodon knows something about the schematics that Victor filched that we don’t know – very likely Victor himself doesn’t know either – and apparently considers it dangerous enough to deal with personally.

Is Zodon out growing his chair? Even accounting for the aggressive forward leaning it looks like he’s bigger compared to his back rest. He use to be able to close it up like a pod or be encased in his washing machine. Now it looks like he would need to squish down to close to the glass.